The occasion for the pursuit is the upcoming Pynchon novel "Bleeding Edge," due Sept. 17. The Pynchon uncovered by Boris Kachka is a man of contradictions, including "a workaholic stoner" and "a literary outsider who's married to a literary agent."

The article details Pynchon's American odyssey through the last century, from his birth in 1937 to a Long Island childhood, hippie days with Richard Farina, a job with Boeing and drifting through Mexico, Manhattan Beach and Humboldt County.

Yet Pynchon has been the most there-but-not-there as a Manhattan resident married to high-powered literary agent Melanie Jackson, where he eschewed photographs and the media but came out for the occasional "Simpsons" cameo or article on the forgotten rock band Lotion.

While a film is being made of one of his books for the first time, with Paul Thomas Anderson directing and Joaquin Phoenix as the pothead detective in "Inherent Vice," there is no sign that Pynchon is coming out of his shell anytime soon.

In the first week of September, Shane Salerno and David Shields' massive biography "Salinger" will go on sale, and before the week is out, the documentary "Salinger," written and directed by Salerno, will open in more than 200 theaters. When it comes to documentaries, that's huge -- it's being...

A burst of thunderstorm activity across the Chicago area in Sunday afternoon resulted in multiple injuries and a death at an event in west suburban Wood Dale, the collapse of a dome in northwest suburban Rosemont and the temporary evacuation of the music festival Lollapalooza in Grant Park downtown.

The father of a 20-year-old Carol Stream, Ill., woman who drowned at Indiana's Porter Beach on Friday night identified her body Sunday afternoon after a rescue team pulled her from Lake Michigan, authorities said.